


Possibilities, Down

by Liara_90



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Inspired by Fanfiction, Loss, One Shot, POV Third Person, Pre-Canon, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 12:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16118225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liara_90/pseuds/Liara_90
Summary: "They called on him in the lab. Because where else would he have been?"The story that sets the whole damn thing in motion.





	Possibilities, Down

* * *

They called on him in the lab. Because where else would he have been?

Captain LeMay rasped his knuckles twice against the door, straining his ears to hear the sounds of lively conversation within. He hesitated for a moment, shuffling slightly, as a minute passed in silence. He allowed his eyes to dart to the nameplate beside the door - NEUROENG LAB 3/A - reassuring himself that they had the right address.

His partner, a fellow Captain fresh from Hat Yai, in the Outer Colonies, caught the glance. He cleared his throat, a gesture which could easily have been interpreted as a cough, but was nonetheless a reprimand. They were stalling. And a Casualty Assistance Officer did not stall, falter, or hesitate.

Captain LeMay touched a fingertip to the door control, half-expecting it to be locked, but the partition slid open without challenge. The two men crossed the threshold with forced confidence, though only far enough for the door to slide shut behind them. It was not their place to intrude, after all.

And there he was.

Doctor Leonard Church was impossible to miss. He was a tall man, made larger by the aura of confidence he projected. In another era he might have made a fine officer, the sort of nobleman meant to command the troops at Waterloo or Antietam. The rigors of laboratory life were already graying his hairs, but his eyes had lost none of their fire.

The Captains stood silently for several seconds, waiting to be noticed. Doctor Church stood in the center of the lab, surrounded by a half-dozen researchers and post-docs, expounding on some breakthrough in neuroengineering in a language that was only vaguely English. It was like watching Socrates at the Lyceum, captivating his audience with a brilliance without measure, educating and guiding a generation of the best and brightest. And he was quite clearly so at ease with his position in the field, dancing along the line where chemistry blurred into physics.

“...excuse me, Alexander,” Doctor Church finally said, quieting a comrade with a practiced wave of his hand. “...it appears that we have company.”

Church’s coterie eyed the intruders wearily. Captain LeMay made a conscious effort to maintain his posture. Relationships between soldiers and scientists were often uneasy understandings, ever since Groves and Oppenheimer had uncorked that genie in Alamogordo. Neither side entirely understood the other - the knuckle-dragging marine or the egg-headed pansy - but the War had made symbiotes of them all.

“Doctor Church,” the Captain began, speaking crisply and clearly, “could we have a moment of your time?”

One of Church’s students spoke next, Alexander, a thick Muscovite accent layered atop a baritone voice. “Doctor Church, it seems _politsiya_ are here for you,” he chuckled, darkly. “Perhaps ship you off to secret I.I. project, _da_?” He shot the Captains a smug grin, using the Russian acronym for ‘artificial intelligence’.

Another associate - this time a thirty-something woman in a lab coat bedecked with patches - got the next word in. “Nah, they want to make sure we’re still-”

“ _Gentleman_.” Church’s voice cut through the chatter like a gunshot. “State your business.”

Captain LeMay cleared his throat, again. “Could we step into your…”

His voice trailed off as he saw the light go out in Doctor Church’s eyes.

“When and where?” The doctor’s head was bowed, his voice quieted.

“Two days ago. January 3, UTC. She was aboard the UNSC _Possibilities_ , which went down with all hands on Jericho VII. The _Possibilities_ took a direct hit from a heavy plasma anti-air cannon while deploying for groundside assault.”

Church’s glasses clattered to the table, landing next to a sheaf of brain cells in petri dishes. His head was in his hands.

“We believe it was painless,” Captain Hertz offered, taking a half-step forward. The smug looks from the scientists were gone now, the jocks-versus-eggheads banter forgotten. “Corporal Church was posthumously-”

“ _Don’t!_ ” Church shouted, slamming his fist down onto the table. Pens and tablets skittered across the anti-bacterial surface, along a slate of polished black. He took a few steadying breaths, knuckles white as he gripped the edge of the table. “When will…. when will her remains be returned to Earth? I understand that due to the war, there are, th-th-there are _delays_ with this, yes, I understand…”

The two Captains exchanged uneasy glances. Hertz bit the bullet. “I’m afraid, Doctor Church, that her frigate was destroyed outright by Covenant firepower. And they were flying over a planetary ocean at the time. Due to operational constraints, we were unable to launch a recovery mission to-”

“-surely you were able to recover, to recover…” tears were streaming openly down his face, his throat choking on his words. “Some personal effects of hers. Her, her _dog tags_ , even.”

“I’m afraid that all of Corporal Church’s belongings were aboard the _Possibilities_ when it went down,” LeMay explained, as gently as he could. “And as Captain Hertz stated, we were unable to mount a recovery operation before Covenant bombardment began-” 

Doctor Church’s hand slapped the table again. Several of his students jumped or winced. Captain LeMay didn’t blame them. “I need… gentlemen, I _need_ …”

Allison had taken everything with her, before his move and her deployment. Not like it’d been much. No family heirlooms, no treasured mementos. She was not - she _had not been_ \- a sentimental woman. She was probably the only enlistee who didn’t even halfway fill her allotted backpack of personal possessions. She’d made him throw out or donate all her stuff - little more than a few paperback books and some tattering outfits - before he moved to his cushy new lab position. Didn’t make sense to ship her shit halfway around the world, she’d argued, not when it’d be two years before she’d see any of it again.

“I need more than…” Church’s words came out haltingly, erratically, disturbing the students who had never seen his composure crack. “The human brain is an _immensely_ fallible organ,” he continued, practically rambling. “Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s... proteins misfolding, membrane curvature, oxidative damage, PCD, axonal swelling…” His mind was drifting, returning to familiar lecture notes instead of having to process what was right in front of him. But a man as smart as Leonard Church could only do that for a few seconds, before that maddeningly clever mind of his refocused itself. “Gentlemen what I am _saying_ is that my _brain_ is not enough to keep her, t-t-to keep her _memory_ alive. I need something - _anything_ \- to… to…”

Church couldn’t get the last words out. His whole body shook, convulsing, as a wave of nausea wracked him. One of his students made a small step towards him, but he repulsed her with a shudder.

“I’m sorry, sir,” repeated Captain LeMay. “We can put a request through the system to contact any surviving servicemen from her previous units. See if she left anyone with a memento, a photograph…”

The Captain trailed off as Doctor Church shook his head. There wouldn’t be. Allison didn’t give out her love with cute presents and trinkets. She even hated having her picture taken. Which was just _absurd_ , because when he was with her that was the only thing he wanted to-

“That will be all,” Church declared. There was no room for argument in his voice. The Captains, tactfully, said nothing further, withdrawing silently.

His students and lab partners still surrounded him, looking at him expectantly. This was a side of Doctor Church they had never seen. They had seen him jubilant, and furious, and depressed, and meditative. They had never seen him _broken_.

“If you all would excuse me,” he said, straightening his posture, “I would like to be alone right now.”

“Of course, Doctor,” Alexander said, speaking clearly on behalf of the group. “Would you like me to drive you?”

“ _Drive me_ , Doctor Ignashevich?” Church asked, addressing him with unusual formality.

Alexander shuffled nervously. “To, ah… how do you say…” His English was flawless, but he was stalling, steadying his nerves “...to ‘ _pick up_ ’, yes, your daughter? From the school?” Alexander glanced at his colleagues, looking for support. “If she does not already…”

Church’s eyes bore holes in the floor. “Miss Li?”

“Yes?” Samantha Li was one of the lab technicians, and also the one who had spent the least amount of time on his team. “Sir?”

“Please contact Miss Ciara Dimova, in Administration. She is a neighbor of mine. If you could ask her to… just for a night…”

Li nodded. “I understand, Doctor,” she said, mostly truthfully. She’d lost an uncle when she was twelve, and had experienced the same unraveling.

She moved to exit the lab, and her movement provided Alexander with an excuse to usher everyone out with her. The Russian engineer shot one last look at Doctor Church, wishing there was something he could do, and knowing that there wasn’t.

“That will be all, Doctor Ignashevich,” Church said, with a definiteness that brooked no response.

The door to the lab slid shut, then locked, leaving Doctor Leonard Church alone. He stumbled about the room, flicking off lights, until only the indicator LEDs of the lab’s machinery were alight, dotting the room like grounded stars. One of the machines whirred distantly off in a corner, running an experiment whose purpose had already been forgotten.

Church blindly groped his way to his small office, snarling slightly as emergency guidance lights flickered to life with his arrival. He locked the door behind him. There was bourbon in a filing cabinet, but he didn’t reach for it. He didn’t want to dull his senses, his mind. He wanted to feel _everything_.

And so he did. Curling into a corner of his office, alone, in the dark, Leonard Church cried. He sobbed, and then he screamed. His phone buzzed, and he shattered it against the wall, not caring who it was. He cried until he no longer could, curled up beneath his desk, shuddering in the darkness.

An eternity later, he felt his mind returning to him. He became aware of the linoleum tiles he was pressed against, the soreness in his sides and the rawness in his throat. He remembered his place in the world, his role in the war effort, his skills and his ability and his drive. He remembered _Allison_ , and he remembered how she had transformed his world.

His cheek flat against the floor, he spotted it, barely visible in the darkened office, wedged between a cabinet and the wall. A small, disposable memory card, scarcely larger than his thumbnail. There were a million more like it in the galaxy, a few grams of PVC encasing non-volatile storage. Allison had bought a stack of them before their last move, never fully trusting cloud storage, or anything she couldn’t hold in her hands. She’d taken them with her, too, not knowing when or if she’d have a connection to the Earthbound data centers again.

Almost blindly, Church reached out for the memory card, clutching it in his fingers, squinting his eyes so he could make out the crystalline screen on the front, which recorded the last use date.

_04/28_.

Church hissed, new tears seeping out of the corners of his eyes. April 2528. The month she’d shipped out.

_Leonard, come on. I have to go. Don't make me hurt you._

The tears on his face dried. And as they did, his mind began to work, a million fine-toothed gears slowly whirring into action. That beautiful mind that had won Allison all those ago years was afire. Doctor Leonard Church was an innovator, a leader, a genius. There were no longer any risks he would not take, any lines he would not cross, any cost he would not pay. He had only one goal left in his life.

And he had a plan.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading my rare descent into the angst mines. Credit where credit is due, this was ~~blatantly stolen from~~ lovingly inspired by _[Taking Sights](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4109686/2/Taking-Sights)_ by [Lavanya Six](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/1511738/Lavanya-Six), which I will confess is one of my favorite stories, ever, of all time. I couldn’t help but draw comparisons between _Neon Genesis Evangelion_ ’s [Gendo Ikari](https://wiki.evageeks.org/Gendo_Ikari) and the Director. Both are men who lost the one thing in their lives they truly cared about, and are willing to do horrible things, even to their own children, to get them back. I’m sorry, but I had to play this parallel moment out.
> 
> As always, please feel free to leave any comments, thoughts, feedback, or headcanons in the comments. Criticism is the only way I’ll ever get better as a writer. If you’d like to know more about me/my writing, feel free to hit up my [About](http://www.pvoberstein.tumblr.com/about) page. I’m also active on both [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/user/pvoberstein/overview) and [Tumblr](http://www.pvoberstein.tumblr.com/), and can be reached through any of the means on my [Contact](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liara_90/profile) page.


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